Ayya Sobhana is the Vice Abbess of Dhammadharini, the monastic women’s community located in Sonoma County. Together with Ayya Tathaaloka Theri, Ayya Sobhana has been deeply involved in restoring Bhikkhuni full ordination in the Theravada tradition. She meditated and trained with Bhante Henepola Gunaratana since 1989 and stayed at the Bhavaha Society in West Virginia from 200 to 2010. She ordained in 2003 and obtained full Bhikkhuni ordination in 2006. Her primary practice is the Eightfold Noble Path - i.e. integration of meditation with ethical living and compassionate relationships for the sake of liberation. During the past decade, Ayya Sobhana has been developing the crosswalk between the Buddha’s teachings and our western understanding of emotion, as it has been transformed by recent developments in neuroscience, evolutionary biology and philosophy of mind.
After her 6 week retreat at Dhammadharini, Ayya Sobhana shares guidelines for working with cittanupasana (contemplation of mental factors) and how to balance the mind factors that may come up in metta meditation. She also links the contemplation of the elements as tools to balancing the mind.
This is a review of how clinging to the five aggregates is a summary of suffering and, in particular, why consciousness can be a key as to whether we are hooked in the system or not. Using examples from neuroscience Ayya Sobhana explains how before knowing the Dhamma we are much more reactive to 'the slings and arrow of outrageous fortune', but through practice we can become more equanimous and calm and can receive the experience of life without being disturbed by it.
This is the third of four special Dhammadharini events celebrating the yearlong 2600th anniversary of Bhikkhuni Sangha, with a focus on the Arahant Bhikkhuni Mahapajapati Gotami, as the pathbreaker, leader, and mentor of the early women's sangha. This was a Seminar on the Leadership of Women in Buddhism.
This talk was offered during the Tuesday night meditation. It talks about what questions to ask to use renunciation as a practice whether a monastic or in lay life.
This talk was given at Yoga Mendocino. Ayya Sobhana first leads a meditation based on the first section of the Dhatuvibhanga Sutta using the elements. Then at 35:30 she goes on to summarize the sutta and take questions. This talk was given a few weeks after the bhikkhunis had done an extensive study of the sutta in their winter retreat.
